Wednesday, September 24, 2014

An interesting way to read

I learned about a tip for increasing reading speed while reading Tim Ferriss's 4-Hour Work Week. Try to limit yourself to two saccades per line. The way you do this is by training your peripheral vision. So for instance, you start each line by looking at the third word and using your peripheral vision to see the beginning. Then end each line by looking at the third to the last word and finishing the line with the peripheral vision.

This is very tough to do if you have strabismus, and thus, are suppressing. Reading in general is tougher if you have strabismus. But in the week or so that I've been training myself to do this, I've changed the way that I read quite a bit. At first it was incredibly difficult and distracting, because I normally read with my right eye. However, now I alternate. When I begin a line, I start with my left eye. Then as I make my way to the end, I go to the right eye.

By doing this, I noticed that my right eye is quite a bit stronger than my left eye. Starting the line is harder than ending it because starting it requires using the peripheral vision of my left eye, which I guess is my lazy eye. Honestly, it's pretty exhausting. But I think it's actually quite beneficial to try and expand the vision in the eye in this sort of way because it's forcing that eye to be stronger and command more resources from my brain. It has increased the power of my VR experiences quite a bit. I have been tired, sleeping a lot, and a bit edgy. These are things that usually come with fruitful changes in the brain in my experience.

I haven't done actual vision therapy in at least a month or so for now. I've been doing mainly VR games. I've been anxiously awaiting for James Blaha's Diplopia to come out. I keep hearing that it's coming soon. James actually spoke in the Enter VR podcast a week ago. It was an excellent interview. It blew my mind listening to such a great mind talk. One of the interesting things he said that stuck with me was that he said his goals aren't per se about fixing strabismus, but improving people's perception(s). I highly recommend giving it a listen.